NCAR papers are prominent in anniversary edition of high-profile journal

May 7, 2014 |Geophysical Research Letters, a leading journal in Earth science, is toasting its 40th anniversary this month with an editor-picked anniversary collection of 40 papers, several of which include authors from NCAR.

Produced by the American Geophysical Union, GRL has published some 31,000 papers since its founding in May 1974. The journal is designed to allow rapid publication of short, timely peer-reviewed articles with broad interest.

A group of current and former editors at GRL narrowed down the anniversary collection to 40 papers from an initial set of 1,000 candidates. Six of the final choices include NCAR authors. The research covers topics that range from sea ice and sea level rise to wintertime temperatures, midlatitude storm tracks, and high-altitude modeling.

The six articles span all five decades of GRL’s existence. The earliest is a 1974 paper by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen (now at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry). It was among the first to quantify the potential loss of stratospheric ozone due to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were widely used in spray cans at the time.

The six papers—with names of authors affiliated with NCAR at the time of publication shown in bold—are:

“It’s wonderful to see a sampling of NCAR’s distinguished science spotlighted in this special issue, as well as the many contributions from our broader community. It is quite an impressive collection,” said UCAR president Tom Bogdan.